In honor of the film's 30th anniversary, Film Forum will be showing David Lynch's dreamy, mystery-thriller, Blue Velvet in 35 mm. Before you experience some of David Lynch's timeless characters in Blue Velvet, I have put together a list of the ten best characters to come from the mind of the enigmatic director. The criteria that I considered in making these selections were how good the actor's performance was, how memorable the character is, and how "Lynchian" the character is. My one self-given restriction for this is that the characters must come from one of Lynch's feature films, which means his short films and the TV show Twin Peaks are off limits (although Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is fair game).
Laura Dern does double duty in arguably the most experimental work of Lynch's career. She plays an actress named Nikki Grace who spends much of the film unsure as to whether she is experiencing life as herself or as the character Susan, from her upcoming film. Dern is completely game for every incredibly weird situation that Lynch throws at her, and she plays the dual personalities of Nikki and Susan with a nervousness that keeps us on edge throughout.
David Lynch clearly has specific types of characters that he enjoys creating, and one of those types is the madman character. These characters are typically violent and short-fused. Robert Loggia perfectly embodies this type in the mesmerizing Lost Highway. With a somewhat serene facade, one does not expect something mundane like a fellow motorist's poor driving to set Mr. Eddy off, but it does, and it is equal parts horrifying and entertaining.
I considered not including Alvin from The Straight Story, due to the fact that it is the only film of Lynch's that he did not write. However, I feel Lynch's direction of Farnsworth had to have played a role in the creation of the character, because Alvin is the ultimate depiction of the kind townsfolk character frequently placed in Lynch's pre-2000 works. Farnsworth plays Alvin with regret and pain all over his face. Both the character and the actor has been heavily weathered by life, which makes Alvin's incredible adventure, and Farnsworth's performance all the more impressive.
Dorothy, played tragically by the wonderful Isabella Rossellini, is one of the main reasons why this film is consistently praised. She is given the tough task of playing the victim, and at times the controller. She feels pain, and sometimes pleasure from the scenarios that she is placed in, and Rossellini perfectly blurs the lines between these feelings, adding to the mysterious nature of the film. And her rendition of the song 'Blue Velvet' is absolutely mesmerizing every single time I hear it.
The horribly disfigured man with a heart of gold, John Merrick, will have you crying at least once throughout David Lynch's The Elephant Man. John Hurt portrays Merrick's physical and emotional pain beautifully. Caked with makeup and prosthetics, he is required to use primarily his voice alone to grab and tug at our heartstrings. Hurt is most successful in causing tears to fall during the moment when Merrick describes the beauty of his mother to Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife (Hannah Gordon). I am convinced that Hannah Gordon was not acting when she wept during this scene.
Even if you have never seen a David Lynch film in your life, there is a reasonable chance that you recognize the name Laura Palmer. The character of Laura Palmer has become a staple of early-nineties (and soon-to-be late-2010's) pop culture. With Fire Walk with Me, Sheryl Lee gets to explore the devastating past of the young lady whose death begins the show Twin Peaks. Lee is required to display a wide range of emotions as the troubled prom queen, and she seemingly does so with ease. The under-appreciated Sheryl Lee brings life to a character who was initially lifeless in the David Lynch canon.
Bobby Peru (like the country), is a sinister, third-person talking psychopath, that only David Lynch could have conceived. Dafoe ramps his creepiness all the way up, and sends shivers throughout your body throughout every second of his screen time. One of my main deciding factors in placing a character on this list was weighing how memorable they were in comparison to other Lynch characters, and I haven't been able to get the gummy grin of Bobby Peru out of my head since the first time I saw him in the electrifying Wild at Heart.
Anxious and flustered; two very evident traits of Jack Nance's protagonist in the entrancing Eraserhead. Life really isn't easy for any character living in a David Lynch-created world, but especially not for one who has newly become the father of a severely deformed child(?). Henry is crippled by awkwardness and looking for peace in any shape or form, which I'm not sure is achievable for a character in a Lynch film. Jack Nance set the bar high for Lynch characters to come, and he wasn't topped for a good while.
One would be hard-pressed to name a more terrifying villain than Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth. Even when simply discussing his beer preference or requesting Roy Orbison's 'In Dreams' during a joy ride, Booth's intensity is at a 14, and the scale ends at 10. In Blue Velvet, Frank Booth brings chaos to the relatively laid-back town of Lumberton. He is the antithesis to the rest of the small town's inhabitants. David Lynch has created the personification of pure evil, and lets him run loose for the duration of this 2-hour film.
In one of the finest performances since the turn of the century, Naomi Watts puts the viewer through a flurry of emotions in her dual role as Betty and Diane. Wide-eyed and ready to try and make a name for herself in Hollywood, Betty enters the film with an innocent smile as shiny as the California sun. Watts shows her great range, and contrasts the Betty scenes with her harrowing performance in the nightmarish Diane scenes. When I think of David Lynch's films, the first image that comes to mind is Naomi Watts's face super-imposed over the Los Angeles skyline from Mulholland Drive. Amongst the collection of great images and characters brought into existence by David Lynch's genius, Naomi Watts has created the character(s) that implanted itself the deepest into my mind, and there is no sign of it leaving anytime soon.
Blue Velvet is playing at Film Forum from March 25th-March 31st.
